A British Post Office video of what they thought in the sixties phones might be like in the 90s. (Bear in mind the phone service was under the Post Office in those days!) Previously posted in NPC.
Basically they sem to suggest that we'd all be using some sort of combination of videophone and Minitel terminal, with CRT monitors and standard cassette-based nswering machines built in. With coaxial cable to connect them all no less (wot no fibre-optics?)
So how might technology and systems develop to give us all this before the 20th century was out? Frankly I'd suggest that parts of it are almost 1980s, but of course not the video side of things. What time period exactly are we looking at? What other technologies need to be in place? How does the rise of home computers and the internet affect these things, o how do they themselves mitigate such developments?